Cheerleading

Today Ruth Ann and I made another girls only trip to watch my neice Madison compete at a cheerleading competition down town. Let me say I have tons of respect for the cheerleading nation...I spent a short amount of time in high school as a cheerleader myself, so I understand the dedication and hard work it takes to succeed. Madison is a sweet, smart and well mannered soon to be teenager and I would be thrilled if Ruth Ann was 1/2 the girl she is right now. Madison began cheering about a year ago and has been teaching Ruth Ann a few moves since starting last summer.









Now that being said...I was completely shocked at how young some of the little girls were at this competition. As we walked into the arena there were girls dressed in cropped tops, short skirts and full on make-up that I knew were not much older than Ruth Ann. Luckily Madison's team is more modest and they were dressed in uniforms that fully covered the tummies. Sure enough, my sister-in-law told me some of these "Mini Teams" had 3 year olds on their teams. First I was shocked that anyone would try to get a group of 3 year olds to do anything in sync and then I was shocked that inorder for Ruth Ann to possibly to be a cheerleader one day we were going to have to start cheerleading practice next year...which we won't be doing by the way.

As a nation our children may rank last world wide in math and science...but apparently we're leading the way in cheering...unless you count toddlers who can dance in sync to an 8 count beat...but atleast that means they can count to 8!